Senior Data Security & Governance Specialist

Purpose of the role:

As a Senior Specialist in Data Security & Governance, you will operate across both the pre-sales and delivery sides of our data security practice, acting as the senior technical authority on Microsoft Purview and Varonis engagements. You will lead the technical discovery, solution design, and commercial shaping of new data security opportunities — running workshops, scoping assessments, building proposals and statements of work, and presenting solutions credibly to both technical and executive audiences. You will then carry that credibility into delivery, leading data risk assessments, data readiness assessments, and full implementation projects across information protection, data loss prevention, insider risk, and data governance. You will act as a technical escalation point and mentor for consultants across the practice, work closely with account management and the wider security team on pipeline and proposition development, and partner directly with customers to translate data risk findings into prioritised, defensible remediation roadmaps.

Role and responsibilities:

Pre-Sales and Solution Design (Primary Focus)

• Act as the lead technical resource on data security and governance opportunities, partnering with account managers and commercial leads from qualification through to close.

• Run customer discovery sessions, technical workshops, and whiteboarding engagements to establish data security requirements, current-state maturity, regulatory drivers, and target outcomes.

• Design and present solution architectures across Microsoft Purview, Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft Defender, and Varonis, articulating fit, licensing implications, and delivery effort in language appropriate to the audience.

• Produce scoping documents, effort estimates, bills of materials, statements of work, and technical proposal content, ensuring commercial deliverability of what is being sold.

• Lead technical responses to RFIs, RFPs, and tender clarification questions, including written responses, solution narratives, and evaluation criteria mapping.

• Deliver product demonstrations, proofs of concept, and pilot engagements that evidence capability against the customer's own data estate.

• Support vendor relationships and partner-led campaigns, maintaining alignment with Microsoft and Varonis programmes, funding mechanisms, and partner competency requirements.

• Contribute to the development of repeatable service offerings, assessment methodologies, and pricing models that shorten the sales cycle and improve delivery consistency.

Data Risk and Data Readiness Assessments

• Lead end-to-end data risk assessments across customer environments, covering sensitive data discovery, classification coverage, permissions and exposure analysis, data sprawl, and third-party or external sharing risk.

• Deliver data readiness assessments to establish whether a customer's data estate is fit for onward initiatives such as Microsoft 365 Copilot, agentic AI deployment, or analytics and governance programmes.

• Configure and operate assessment tooling, including Microsoft Purview Information Protection, Data Loss Prevention, Insider Risk Management, Data Security Posture Management, and Varonis Data Security Platform.

• Analyse assessment output to identify material risk concentrations, over-permissioned data, stale and orphaned content, and gaps in labelling and policy coverage.

• Translate technical findings into executive-ready reporting, including risk heat maps, prioritised remediation roadmaps, effort and cost estimates, and clear commercial follow-on recommendations.

• Map assessment findings against relevant regulatory and control frameworks, including GDPR, DORA, NIS2, ISO 27001, and sector-specific requirements across financial services and the public sector.

• Present findings and recommendations directly to customer stakeholders up to and including board and executive level.

Project Delivery and Implementation

• Lead the design, build, and rollout of data security and governance solutions, taking technical ownership from design authority through to handover.

• Implement Microsoft Purview capabilities including sensitivity labelling, auto-labelling, Data Loss Prevention, Insider Risk Management, Data Lifecycle Management, and Unified Catalog for data governance and data quality.

• Implement and tune Varonis deployments, including data classification, permissions remediation, least-privilege automation, and alerting.

• Define and document target-state architecture, policy frameworks, classification taxonomies, and operational runbooks that the customer can sustain after handover.

• Run pilot phases and phased rollouts, managing policy tuning, false-positive reduction, and user impact in live environments.

• Work alongside project managers to maintain delivery quality, manage scope and change control, and keep engagements to time and budget.

• Provide knowledge transfer, enablement sessions, and documentation to customer teams and to internal managed service colleagues taking on ongoing support.

Practice Development and Technical Leadership

• Act as a technical escalation point and mentor for junior and mid-level consultants across data security engagements.

• Maintain and improve internal assessment templates, delivery accelerators, reference architectures, and reusable technical assets.

• Track roadmap and feature changes across Microsoft Purview, Microsoft Fabric, and Varonis, and assess the impact on existing propositions and live customer engagements.

• Contribute to thought leadership activity, including customer briefings, webinars, and partner events, to support demand generation for the practice.

Experience and skills:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, cybersecurity, information management, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

• 5+ years of experience in data security, data governance, or information protection, with demonstrated seniority such as technical leadership, solution ownership, or practice development.

• Demonstrable experience in a customer-facing pre-sales or consulting capacity, including solution scoping, proposal and statement of work authoring, and presenting to senior stakeholders.

• Strong hands-on experience with Microsoft Purview, covering information protection, Data Loss Prevention, Insider Risk Management, and data governance capabilities.

• Hands-on experience with the Varonis Data Security Platform, including classification, permissions analysis, and remediation workflows.

• Working knowledge of the wider Microsoft security and data stack, including Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft Defender, Microsoft 365 administration, and Microsoft Fabric or Power BI.

• Proven experience delivering data risk assessments and producing executive-level findings and remediation roadmaps.

• Solid understanding of data protection and regulatory frameworks relevant to the Irish and wider European market, including GDPR, DORA, NIS2, and ISO 27001.

• Ability to communicate clearly on technical issues to both technical and non-technical audiences, and to document work to a professional, client-ready standard.

• Data analytics experience: ability to examine data sets to find trends and draw conclusions about the information they contain.

• Experience working in a partner, MSP, or systems integrator environment across multiple concurrent customers is a plus.

• Familiarity with scripting or automation, preferably PowerShell, Microsoft Graph, or KQL.

• Relevant certifications are a plus, particularly Microsoft SC-400, SC-401, SC-100, or Varonis technical accreditations.